


Tainted Hands

by MikoGalatea



Category: New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Gen, Spoilers, mentions of Ryouma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-18
Updated: 2018-10-18
Packaged: 2019-08-04 01:38:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16337267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MikoGalatea/pseuds/MikoGalatea
Summary: For once, Kirumi's gloves haven't been able to do their usual job of keeping her hands clean. Set during chapter 2.





	Tainted Hands

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for monthlysupergo's May 2018 Tiny Bingo challenge on Dreamwidth. Out of the four prompts I was given on my little card, this one is for "Gloves".

Kirumi's gloves were meant to keep her hands clean and protected while she carried out her duties as a maid. Alas, for the first time in as long as she could remember, they hadn't completely done their usual job.

Having returned to her dorm room in the dead of the night and taken a replacement pair from her closet, she observed the current state of her hands. The entire palm of her right glove had been shredded away, as had much of the fabric on the underside of her fingers; recalling how the damage came to be, she gritted her teeth at her bad luck in where the scraps had fallen. Yet thanks to this very glove, her hand had escaped significant injury.

It wasn't completely unblemished, though. Her palm was a little red where the skin was exposed, and a few stray strands from the rope she'd used earlier were still stuck around it. The glove had protected her hand from anything too serious –- better the fabric had been torn than her own flesh -– but it had not kept it clean.

Still, Kirumi did not consider that to be any fault of the glove itself. It had done the job she wanted it to do as part of her plan, misfortune with the fallen scraps aside, and to her that was what mattered. Besides, she knew that even if the laws of physics and everything commonsensical were to warp in such a way that friction burn didn't exist and her gloves didn't have to get ripped at all, there was no way they could possibly have kept her hands clean.

Not when she'd dirtied them by taking a human life.

It had been a necessary course of action, as far as she was concerned. The condition for leaving this academy was for a student to commit a murder and get away with it in the following school trial; as Kirumi _had_ to get back out into the outside world no matter what, it stood to reason that she had no choice but to kill one of her classmates in order to do so.

Fortunately for her, Ryouma had been an entirely willing victim. She knew that had to be true, because surely _he_ of all people must have been able to sense her killing intent as soon as he'd recognised that she had something to live for –- something he wasn't able to find for himself -– and surely turning his back to her when she so clearly had that killing intent must have meant he was consenting to die by her hand. Her strength of resolve and pride as the perfect maid did not allow for the idea that she was mistaken about Ryouma's death wish, or that she was simply rationalising her own choice of action and absolving herself of too great a sin by pinning responsibility on him.

She saw him as a sacrifice for the greater good, and her next intention was to sacrifice all the other students in much the same way with the upcoming trial.

Surely they would understand, she believed, once they learned just how _vital_ it was that she had to survive and escape this place. With the lives of the entire population of Japan at stake, she was certain the others would accept the fact that the needs of the many outweighed the needs of the few, and that they would even be completely willing –- no, _eager_ -– to give up their lives for the sake of the whole country.

If she had to appeal to their emotions to make them see what needed to be done, then so be it. If she had to get her hands dirty for her cause -– dirtier than they already were from killing Ryouma –- then so be it. If she had to bear her people's hatred for soaking her hands in the other students' blood to save them –- enough blood that even her pitch-black gloves could never hide it -– then so be it.

_Everyone_ was counting on her to live, after all.


End file.
